Wednesday, September 10, 2008

No, a concerned Christian is upset that the game is based on the principle of evolution, which she finds antithetical to her entire world view, and as such, believes the game shouldn't be sold.

Notice I didn't say the words "to children" there (it is rated Everyone +10). She doesn't want the game sold period. Aside from evolution, the game features fantasy violence, comic mischief and animated blood.

Let's review here. There is no graphic violence, no preprogrammed sexual content or nudity, no suggestive themes, no gore, no coarse language and no drugs or alcohol and she wants an outright ban.

Correction, she wants Electronic Arts, the largest game distribution house in the world, to feel the pressure of her efforts and decide to take the game off the market themselves before she takes some kind of legal action (under what particular law she would do so under escapes me).

While those of us who are familiar with EA stop laughing, I will present one entry in particular where she takes creator Will Wright to task personally:

I used to like Will Wright. He created Sim City, a fantastic game that celebrated the earth that God created for us and allowed you to use all your God given abilities to make an ideal society. But if you ever felt like you had too much power, God would come in with a tornado or an earthquake and put you back in place.

You would think that as a member of the Episcopal Church, a smart man like Will Wright would not be capable of creating Spore. However, we must be reminded that the Episcopal Church is the only church in america that ordains homosexuals on a regular basis.

It makes sense that a perverted church would cause a man to make the creations he has in this game. It just may be that evolution is not the only thing to fear this game teaching your children.

I mean, most people when they encounter a game they don't like think: I don't like that, so neither myself nor my family shall partake in it. This is one of those increasingly common cases where someone thinks that just because they are offended by something, they should try to protect everyone else from it, even though very few people would ever want them to.

However, this whole thing got me to thinking about what gaming would be like without evolution... and it was an interesting place indeed.

Things that would no longer be possible from the broadest definition of evolution* and creationism:

Leveling up characters (so pretty much wave goodbye to Role Playing games and those elements)Incremental Statistical Improvement/Decline (in sports games as a whole, every instance of a particular player is an individual in that community... some will get better, some will get worse... but that can't happen, can it)Weapon Upgrades (you take what you are spawned with and you like it)Beta Testing (because there is no trial and error in creation... the people making the game have to get everything right the first time)Patches (see above) Expansion Packs (see above)

Truth be told, if it weren't for the evolution of ideas in gaming, well, likely everyone would still be stuck with playing Pong... which I am sure would make that anonymous Christian happy and the rest of us miserable.

The person in question started quoting from Genesis in their latest post, and I don't remember this part of that book:

“21. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never gonna give you up.22. “Never gonna let you down.”23.”Never gonna run around and desert you.”24. “Never gonna make you cry.”25. “Never gonna say goodbye.”26. “Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.”27.”Never truly believe anything you read on the Internet. There will always be cases of Poe’s Law.”

The funny thing is that, while some see the game as promoting evolution, there are a lot of people on claiming that Spore is popularizing the intelligent design agenda. And you know what? They're both right. The concept is obviously based on evolution, but then, you can't have a god game without a God (or, at least, a user playing God).

Incidentally, going by my Spore experience, that "on the sixth day, God created man" business is a little off. It's more like "And at 7:00 in the morning, God finally got to bed and cursed himself for staying up all night creating man."